Medical marijuana: Will Ohio be next to legalize?

Sunday

Jan 12, 2014 at 7:00 AM

A petition drive is underway in Ohio to put legalization of medical marijuana on the November general election ballot.

For as long as Jen Coventry can remember, she has struggled with chronic pain. The 34-year-old Newcomerstown woman was born with cerebral palsy, a condition that she says has made it impossible for her to walk on some days.

"I deal with constant joint pain, muscle pain, stiffness," she said.

Coventry realizes that her age and health issues put her in the target group for a petition, which supporters hope to place on the November general election ballot, to legalize medical marijuana in Ohio.

It would allow state residents 18 and over to grow, process and purchase therapeutic cannabis to treat debilitating medical conditions, including chronic pain.

The initiative, authored by the Ohio Rights Group, would allow Ohio to join 20 other states that have legalized the drug for medical use.

The topic is made even more timely because Colorado became the first state to legalize marijuana for recreational use Jan. 1. Washington state will implement recreational-use policies later this year.

For now, the Ohio Rights Group is focused on legalizing therapeutic use, according to one of its co-founders, Mary Jane Borden.

Borden, who co-wrote the constitutional amendment, said that if it passes, it "has the potential to alleviate the suffering of over 100,000 Ohioans (and) provide Ohio with an estimated $50 million in tax revenue in five years."

She said it also will create a lot of jobs.

But Coventry isn't getting on board. "People look at me and think I'm this super-liberal chick, and I guess I am, but this is one issue I'm strongly against," she said.

Coventry said she has had personal experiences that lead her to believe legal marijuana would be harmful. A 1997 graduate of Tuscarawas Central Catholic High School, Coventry said she lost some of her closest friends and classmates to drug abuse.

"I was part of that culture that was very reckless with different kinds of activities I no longer participate in," she said.

"I had a lot of friends in high school that had experimented with drugs. Most had started with marijuana," she said. "Many of those kids that I hung out with in high school, that had started young with marijuana — they became heroin addicts." Some of them have died as a result, she added.

Knowing that has turned her off from the drug, and has made her leery of using prescription painkillers as well. She sticks to physical therapy and uses painkillers sparingly.

Coventry said she realizes she is in the minority when it comes to individuals with chronic pain, but her concerns about addiction override any hope she has for medicinal value.

"I have a lot of negative connotations to go with the drug," she said. "It's hard for me to see it as positive and as a medicine, even though it's technically an herb."

LEGALIZED MARIJUANA

Other local residents don't share Coventry's view. On Thursday, The Times-Reporter asked readers to weigh in on the issue over Facebook. Several residents cited chronic health problems. One woman said she suffers from severe migraines; a few others said it would help them with their anxiety. Many believed it would generate more tax revenue for the state.

Those are the people that Ohio Rights Group members such as Borden say they are trying to help. The 61-year-old Westerville resident said she spent nine years in the pharmaceutical industry as an analyst and began lobbying for medical marijuana in 2002.

"It's one plant, many uses," she said.

Her group began sending out petitions last May, and needs to have more than 300,000 signatures to the secretary of state by June for the initiative to go on the November ballot.

If the Ohio Cannabis Rights Amendment is passed, Borden said, it will help people with cancer, HIV/AIDS, glaucoma, multiple sclerosis, Alzheimer's, celiac disease (an allergy to gluten), chronic nausea, seizures and depression.

Additional conditions would be decided by a nine-member commission board, the majority chosen by the cannabis rights group and a few by the governor. The amendment would not allow users to be penalized by the legal system or employers. Parents could give marijuana to their children.

Under the proposed amendment, neither law enforcement nor an employer can use a urine, blood, tissue, hair or skin test to determine impairment. The amendment says impairment must be based on scientific evidence, but doesn't say how.

Borden's organization also calls for eligible Ohio residents to be allowed to cultivate hemp for other uses including paper, fuel, foods, building materials and clothing.

'PANDORA'S BOX'

As coordinator for the Anti-Drug Coalition, Jodi Salvo is extremely worried that the issue will get on the ballot. She understands that many of the people in favor of medical marijuana feel that way out of a sense of compassion toward those with serious illnesses and chronic pain.

However, she says, Marinol — a prescription drug made from marijuana that is used to treat chronic pain and boost appetites — already is legally available. She said it is approved by the federal Food and Drug Administration and doesn't get patients high, unlike the herbal "forms of therapy" the amendment is calling for.

"We're just opening Pandora's box when we say 'OK, let's use this,' " she said.

Citing statistics from the Drug Free Action Alliance, an Ohio anti-drug advocacy group, Salvo said the potency of marijuana has tripled in the past 15 years and is five times stronger than it was in the 1960s. And while not everyone who uses the drug is an addict, Salvo said, those who are addicted to hard drugs started with marijuana.

And while marijuana possession has been largely decriminalized, felony thefts, breaking and entering, domestic violence, forgery and other crimes which have a strong substance abuse correlation have not, said Tuscarawas County Common Pleas Judge Elizabeth Lehigh Thomakos.

"I just finished 15 years on the bench," Thomakos said. "I have not read a single sentencing report on someone with an addiction to another drug that hasn't started with marijuana."

That's one reason Thomakos has a concern about legalizing the substance, even for therapeutic reasons. The other is that the amendment as written doesn't allow for a plausible way of determining impairment.

SOCIAL COST

To Salvo, the biggest issue is the social cost.

To prove her point, Salvo pulled up a diagram that was published in The New York Times in 2008. The article looked at the financial gains of the alcohol and tobacco industries and the social cost based on criminal activity, addiction counseling, prevention and more.

According to The Times, state and federal governments received $14 billion in tax revenue from the alcohol industry, but spent $185 billion on alcohol-related problems. The government also received $25 billion in revenue from the tobacco industry, but lost $200 billion for social issues.

Salvo believes the government will see a similar trend with marijuana usage.

"Everything is going to come down to perceived risk and accessibility," she said. "With more access comes more usage, which comes with more addiction."

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